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Category: Tuesday

COVID-19: Curiouser still in Kogi
Olatunji Dare

THE deadliest condition that can afflict a policy-maker and the environment in which he or she operates, it has been said, is ignorance compounded by arrogance.

This lethal combo, his misguided and uncharitable adversaries claim, is what has moved, driven and animated the response of the Executive Governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, to the outbreak of Coronavirus disease in Nigeria and reduced the state’s residents to sitting ducks for its visitation.

No sooner had the first case of the pandemic been reported in Nigeria than Bello, without fear and without testing, proclaimed his domain impregnable to the coronavirus and off-limits to the disease it spawns. It meant nothing that Kogi shares heavily-trafficked borders with 10 of Nigeria’s 36 states and is also the gateway to the nation’s capital Abuja, and to the North.

It gets curiouser still.

Innocent of the basic literature on the subject, he views COVID-19 with the abomination the ancients reserved for leprosy. To mention Coronavirus disease and Kogi in the same breath is to him an abomination of scriptural proportions.

It is of no consequence, they charge, that COVID-19 is not the death sentence it was once feared to be; that four of every five afflicted persons survive it unimpaired for the most part, and go on to live healthy and productive lives.

You thought you had heard the most scandalous of their vituperations, only to realize that they were just warming up. And so, Bello, they add while you are still shaking your head in disbelief at their contumely, is totally ignorant of that elementary fact and too far gone in his pig-headedness to learn and grow.

I don’t pity him. Personally, I believe that Bello brought all this on himself. For, other than a hand-held device he said he had developed and distributed throughout Kogi to keep the state off-limits to the pandemic, he has not deigned to explain what has made the state a graveyard for the Coronavirus. Nor did he patent the invention.

Until lately, whenever they posted the latest COVID-19 bulletin, Kogi stood alone with a perfect score. Not a single reported case. But his unforgiving adversaries were not in the least impressed. They point out that, in virtually every sphere of the nation’s life, the official records are notoriously and incurably unreliable.

Bello’s claim would perhaps have been more persuasive if Kogi’s authorities had opened up their books to investigators, showing the names and particulars of persons tested, where, when, and with what results. Inside sources tell me that these records exist but that Bello would not release them because doing so would do irreparable harm to the bedrock principle of self-effacement that has undergirded his entire adult life.

One can then understand his reticence in publishing, if only to silence his adversaries, a catalogue of the testing centres he had built to contain and eviscerate the pandemic, just in case it had the temerity to intrude into Kogi’s pristine environment — the quarantine facilities, the intensive care units he has rigged up, the number of ventilators and hospital beds he has acquired, the quantities of personal equipment protection he has stockpiled

But, absent a public showing of mobilization and preparedness on that scale, his adversaries insist, the whole spiel about Kogi’s impermeability to the Coronavirus must be deemed too good to be true.

Not so the National Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. It dispatched a team of experts to the Kogi capital, Lokoja, to check things out, hoping that Kogi would turn out to be an outlier in the pandemic and provide the lead in the global effort to vanquish it.

But Bello, ever true to his calling as an accountant, had his suspicions. He had not toiled so tirelessly to make Kogi and its periphery a Coronavirus-free zone only to allow some interlopers hiding behind the Federal Might to muck up its prized status as an island of pristine wholesomeness in a murky sea roiled by the Coronavirus.

What if the team’s true mission was to befoul that pristine wholesomeness by dispersing elements of the virus surreptitiously at every stop? And what if a goal no less sinister was to inveigle Kogi into joining the ranks of fraudulent claimants in a federation of beggar-states?

Bello was ready.

In Lokoja, the team’s leader, Dr Andrew Noah, committed a violation of the pandemic’s protocol so egregious that a less accommodating governor would have ordered all its members kept in prison custody for as long as he wished. Instead, he ordered them to submit to quarantine for a mere 14 days, or head back to their base forthwith. For their safety, and to ensure that they did not further compromise Kogi’s environmental immunity, he detailed security officials to escort them across the border.

Unfazed by this rout, Bello’s — and Kogi’s – relentless adversaries confected a case of the affliction in my hometown Kabba, and publicised it on every conceivable media outlet. Pro-active as always, Bello placed the entire local government area under total lockdown and ordered house-to-house testing.

Not a single resident tested positive.

You would think that this triumph of world-class leadership would move Bello’s sworn enemies to sheathe their swords and resolve to work with him to keep Kogi free of all ailments known to humankind and those that may yet surface.

But they are too small-minded for that.

In their latest assault on all that is decent and of good report, they are trumpeting it that two leading Kogi jurists who died recently: the Chief Judge, Nasir Ajanah, and the President of the Customary Court of Appeal, Ibrahim Atadoga, had been felled by nothing else but – you guessed right – COVID-19.

Their evidence for this preposterous assertion rests on no firmer ground than the statements allegedly posted by their grieving families who, let us admit it, have never claimed any training in the arcane field of forensic epidemiology.

Bello knew the judges personally and had closely monitored their treatment for the ailments that claimed their lives. He can therefore assert with the highest confidence that their deaths were absolutely unrelated to the Coronavirus.

He has also revealed that the Coronavirus that has upturned some parts of the world is nothing but a toothless phantom forced on the public for the sinister purpose of creating fear and panic among various communities, by evil forces bent on curtailing their population and stealing their resources, Kogi being one of the few exceptions.

As I see it, the time has come when Nigeria must heed his counsel, abandon its manipulators, domestic and foreign, and humble itself to learn from him the secret formula that has proved so stunningly successful in keeping Bello’s domain safe from COVID-19.

I can now reveal that the armed marauders who descended on the Federal Medical Centre in Lokoja the other day, burned it down and carted away whatever they did not smash up, were on a quest to divest Bello of his propriety rights to that priceless formula. Luckily for us all, they went to the wrong place.

They just might stumble on the right place unless Bello hastens to share the secret with the world while he still has it. Time is not on his side.
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July 7, 2020
Trial of 1999 Constitution

Gabriel Amalu

Those who argue that the 1999 constitution (as amended), is filled with absurdities will point to the impending constitutional crisis in Ondo State as one more proof of the claim.

Ondo State has become a kingdom divided amongst its princes, with the governor being in the All Progressive Congress (APC) and the deputy, defecting to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

To make matters worse, the governor has unfortunately been diagnosed as positive to the corona virus disease, otherwise known as COVID-19.

In that divided kingdom, Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), the governor of the state has declared his deputy, Agboola Ajayi, an enemy of the state, and in fact, the greatest threat to the state administration.

Yet, by the provision of section 187(1) of the 1999 constitution (as amended), Ajayi is the constitutional alter ego of the governor, the counterpart copy if you like, or indeed the governor’s shadow.

Should the governor for any reason, become incapacitated, and unable to perform the functions of his office, the deputy governor, ipso facto, becomes the governor without much ado.

Yet, in the words of the Ondo State Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Donald Ojogo, the deputy governor is “the greatest threat to good governance in Ondo State and you can’t attempt to hand over to people like that.”

For effect, he added: “Agboola Ajayi is the greatest threat to this government.” But speaking with tongue in cheek, he confirmed: “the deputy has left governance, though he is still in government.”

Clearly, the statement attributed to the spokesperson of the Ondo State government is an absurdity qua incongruous, if I may use such expression.

But, in fairness to Ojogo, the current situation in Ondo State is a classical instance of a tsetse fly perching on the scrotum.

As he rightly stated, while the deputy governor has left governance, he has not left government. But of note, while governance gives allowance for the predilection, the whims and caprices of the official of the state; the legitimacy of a government, the substratum of the office, is predicated on the provisions of the enabling law, in this instance, the 1999 constitution (as amended).

In the beginning, section 187(1) of the constitution, says: “In any election to which the foregoing provisions of this part of this chapter relate, candidate for the office of governor of a state shall not be deemed to have been validly nominated for such office unless he nominates another candidate as his associate for his running for the office of governor, who is to occupy the office of deputy governor, and that candidate shall be deemed to have been duly elected to the office of deputy governor if the candidate who nominated him is duly elected as governor in accordance with the said provision.”

So, the constitution envisages in the above provision that the deputy governor shall ab inito, be an associate of the governor.

Having been elected into office, on the premise that he is nominated by the governor, as his associate, does a deputy governor become an appendage of the governor, existing at the pleasure of the governor, or a constitutional creation, part, but independent of the governor, even though a spare product, which is used to substitute the original, should it become incapacitated to function?

Again, let us turn to the constitution. By the provision of section 186, the constitution provides that: “There shall be for each state of the federation a deputy governor.”

While in section 190, it says: “Whenever the governor transmits to the speaker of the House of Assembly written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation or that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to the speaker of the House of Assembly a written declaration to the contrary such functions shall be discharged by the deputy governor as acting governor.”

Section 191(1) of the constitution adumbrates on the constitutional importance of the deputy governor, thus: “The deputy governor of a state shall hold the office of governor of the state if the office of governor becomes vacant by reason of death, resignation, impeachment, permanent incapacity or removal of the governor from office for any other reason in accordance with section 188 or 189 of this constitution.”

As many are wont to say, the deputy governor is a spare tyre, but if you have ever been stranded on a lonely stretch of road, without a spare tyre, you will appreciate that spare tyres are of immense value.

The importance of the above constitutional imperative were frequently ignored by governors and even presidents, so much so that it nearly upended our fledgling constitutional democracy during the incapacitation of late President Umaru Yar’Adua.

Power tasted so sweet that the wife of the late president, in cohort with a cabal in the presidency, sought to appropriate the powers of the president, when President Yar’Adua could no longer perform the functions of his office, the 1999 constitution be damned.

Regrettably, while President Yar’Adua could, he refused to obey the clear provision of section 145, of the constitution, which provides mutatis mutandis, similar provision as section 190, with respect to the office of the president.

What saved the day was the invocation of reasonableness, succinctly encapsulated as the doctrine of necessity. Since that debacle, the lawmakers have since made necessary amendments to countermand the recalcitrance of a governor or president, by the provisions of section 190(2), in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (First Alteration) Act.

While wishing Governor Rotimi Akeredolu a quick and complete healing from the afflictions of COVID-19, the constitutional imperative is that while going into isolation and treatment, for a disease that has so far beguiled the medical world, he ought to transmit the letter envisaged by section 190 of the 1999 constitution (as amended).

But he has ruled out that expectation. Interestingly, while section 186 of the constitution, declares without equivocation that: “There shall be for each state of the federation a deputy governor” section 187(1) envisages that it is the governor who shall nominate “his associate” to that high office.

The gaping gap, in the constitution, of what should happen, should the deputy governor, at any stage in the relationship, seize to remain an associate of the governor, puts the constitution on trial.

Of course, there are several other aberrations in the 1999 constitution, which make some commentators consider the document a fraud entrusted on Nigerians, by the retreating military junta in 1999.

How would the Ondo State constitutional aberration be resolved, should it turn into a debacle, since the governor and his associates, see the deputy governor, as enemy of the state?

July 7, 2020
Ekiti’s roiling progressives

Olakunle Abimbola

“The good thing, though, is what the Ekiti progressives could do, if they band together. The Adeyeye-MOB-Olubunmi Adetunmbi senatorial triad, to the 9th Senate, is reminiscent of West’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) 1st eleven, of the 2nd Republic.

But two years hence, when gubernatorial push-and-shove hits upon the land — will this beautiful alliance still stand?” — ‘Ekiti pendulum’, 26 March 2019

In Ekiti, a flamboyant “war strategist” baits a dashing guerrilla-in-chief, in a red-hot battle front.

There, Governor Kayode Fayemi wars, no holds barred, with former Senator Babafemi Ojudu, sitting presidential special adviser on political affairs.

But the Fayemi-Ojudu tangle is only the face of a deep Ekiti progressives roiling, that probably cuts right down the ranks; given the tone of a June 28 statement, “Ekiti: time to take a stand”.

That statement, by the “Ekiti APC Stakeholders”, is backed by signatures of, well, some Ekiti progressives powers and principalities!

Still, those home with Ekiti progressives’ gather-to-scatter curse now sneer, with a matching icy smile — have we not seen all of these before?

That feeling reinforces the above rather long opening quote, from “Ekiti pendulum”, this column’s 26 March 2019 take, just after the Ekiti progressives’ triumph, at the 2019 general elections.

Now, it’s Fayemi’s second and last gubernatorial midterm; the “two years hence” is here; and the “gubernatorial push-and-shove” is dawning.

But the Ekiti “beautiful alliance”, of an Abuja senatorial dream team, anchored on a solid progressive phalanx at home, is as standing as the egg-like Humpty Dumpty in the nursery rime before his great fall, and eventual scatter, into unrecoverable bits!

Melodramatic? Maybe! But look at the stark facts. Dayo Adeyeye, one of the three senators, is out in the cold, no thanks to a controversial judicial dismissal. With that had come a whispering campaign, that his fate arose from the alleged ploys of a fiend-posing-as-friend at home.

Then Adeyeye, who in a huff stormed off to the rival PDP, against Kayode Fayemi’s Action Congress (AC) gubernatorial nomination in 2007, but stormed back to assist the same Fayemi do a 2018 governorship encore, with his Ise-Orun votes (which trumped the PDP lead in Ado-Ikere), is back in the intra-APC anti-Fayemi camp.

The other Ekiti APC Stakeholders include former Senators Tony Adeniyi (Ekiti South) and Babafemi Ojudu (Ekiti Central); former House of Representatives members, Oyetunde Ojo (Ekiti Central II) and Bimbo Daramola (Ekiti North I), with other signees, numbering no less than 15.

Even a casual scour of this list births palpable unease. Tony Adeniyi was one of the active lawyers during the marathon Fayemi mandate reclamation case (2007-2010).

Bimbo Daramola, director-general of Fayemi’s botched 2014 return to power, was the election-eve prisoner of war (POW), during that controversial election.

Now, be wary of apportioning blames in politicians’ squabbles, for they and they alone know what is amiss — a secret they seldom ever share! Still, why are these once-upon-a-time Fayemi allies massing in opposing camps?

Since 1999, why do the Ekiti progressives appear stung by a gather-to-scatter plague?

The Ekiti APC Stakeholders accused Governor Fayemi of sundry cronyism: allegedly spreading the party’s legitimate pork, to the point of brazen illegitimacy, among his alleged “tokan-tokan” (Yoruba for honest and genuine) inner clique.

They also accused him of strong arm tactics to muscle dissent, via illicit Ekiti APC suspensions, which succeeded in some cases but back-fired in others.

Ojodu said his backfired because his ward executives spurned the move. However, the document named the likes of Adeniyi, Daramola, Ojo, Bunmi Ogunleye, Ben Oguntuase and Dele Afolabi as either “been suspended or in the process of suspension.”

But the Fayemi side could flaunt a pleasurable smack from a Victor Ogunje piece, published in This Day issue of Sunday, July 5, entitled: “Fayemi: of a rising profile and disturbed rivals”, which suggests the Ekiti storm is nothing but peer envy. Maybe.

In that piece, Fayemi’s friends carpeted Ojudu as a perennial gadfly that fought everyone from Adeniyi Adebayo to Fayose, Segun Oni and Fayemi — Ekiti governors all, legit or otherwise, since 1999.

Ogunje also branded the Ojudu group as ingrates who, having earlier secured election on the party’s platform, are allegedly now sworn to destroying it, for selfish purposes. But the key question: what’s the “party” to the contrasting sides?

Still, whatever the merits or de-merits of those suspensions, or the truth or otherwise of the governor’s alleged despotic tendencies, a raft of suspensions can’t be good for the Ekiti progressives — except in 2022, they crave to re-meet their Waterloo of 2003 and 2014, when their fratricidal in-fighting gifted PDP power, unleashing the twin-pestilence of Fayose’s two terms.

That progressive-conservative Ekiti power see-saw wheels the discourse towards Ekiti’s low IGR (a gauge of its local economy) and economic laggard status.

Of all Nigeria’s geo-political blocs, Ekiti nestles in the South West, that delivers a thumping N414 billion in IGR — other corresponding blocs being: South-South (N198 billion, despite its oil wealth), North West (N69 billion), North Central (N54 billion), South East (N49 billion) and North East (N29 billion).

But in that South West, Ekiti’s N2.9 billion IGR cuts the picture of a pauper moon-lighting among royals, given what other South West states post: Lagos (N302 billion), Ogun (N73 billion), Oyo (N19 billion), Osun (N8.8 billion) and Ondo (N8.6 billion).

Indeed, in all of Nigeria, Ekiti bests only two states, in IGR: the terror war-torn Borno (N2.7 billion) and Ebonyi (N2.3 billion). Even then, you see this pair’s transformative investments in social and physical infrastructure.

Indeed, Ebonyi is a state to watch, for an IGR surge, given Governor David Umahi’s infrastructural thirst, these past five years. Wish anyone could say that of Ekiti! This then is the state, where the progressive brain boxes bait self-destruction, yet again!

But this piece will close with frank advice for Governor Fayemi. The media is awash with his “soaring profile”, on account of national visibility, as chairman of Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF). But in real terms, what does that amount to?

Check out all the past NGF chairmen: Obong Victor Bassey Attah (2004-2006), Lucky Igbinedion (2006-2007), Bukola Saraki (2007-2011), Rotimi Amaechi (2011-2015) and Abdul’aziz Yari (2015-2019) — how relevant are they in today’s polity?

The last three are rather instructive: both Yari, a sitting senator and Amaechi, the hardworking Transport minister, are in government. But by commission or omission, both denied their home APC elective offices in the 2019 general election.

Bukola Saraki, also former Senate president? He surrendered his Kwara fort and empire to become an internally displaced politician (IDP), no thanks to the Otoge election-season rout!

All five past NGF chairmen seemed to harbour an Icarius complex. Remember Icarius, that brat in Greek myth that ignored Daedalus, his father’s caution, flew too close to the sun, and sank without trace? Is that what Fayemi seeks?

Fayemi and fellow Ekiti progressives had better sit and knock into shape compromises to blot out their gather-to-scatter curse. Otherwise, they risk history’s dire verdict of condemnable ego trips, when homeland Ekiti needed them to pool their talents.

July 7, 2020
APC: The morning after

By Sanya Oni

Never mind the sensational dissolution of its National Working Committee last week by President Muhammadu Buhari and his equally dramatic order on the feuding parties to sheathe their swords, most observers have come to agree that the crisis-ridden ruling All Progressives Congress party has at least been handed a sure life-line out its self-inflicted troubles.

Whether the measures taken were strictly legal or constitutional or whether they actually go to the roots of the problem which is the unbridled jousting for the control of the party as indeed the contestations over the soul of the party – is a however a different matter.

With a good chance, Governor Mai Mala Buni and company in the caretaker committee have a fair chance of putting the broken parts together in the next few months. In this, the former chairman, Adams Oshiomhole as indeed the outgone NWC have made their tasks easier. Whereas the former has since accepted the decisions of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) in good faith, going as far as withdrawing his pending appeal at the apex court, the latter has sensibly acquiesced to the resolutions taken at the party’s NEC to allow peace to reign.

Unfortunately, if we agree that the catalyst – certainly not the casus belli –for the rapidly unfolding events was the debacle in Edo, one cannot but wonder if the party has equally adverted its mind to the other crises foisted by the factionalisation of the party in the state more so as the gubernatorial election is actually less than three months from now. Yes, the highest organ of the party, NEC has affirmed the primary that produced Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu as its candidate; but then, with the state chapter of the party torn down the middle with one party rejecting the process that produced the candidate, the handshake, would appear to have gone past the elbow – so to speak!

For a party, that is an unenviable position to be. Here is a party that produced the governor who has now decamped to another party. We are talking of a party whose one-time governor did not just rebuff all entreaties by the party and its leadership to swear in elected members of the state legislature, but has employed every conceivable tricks out of the rule books to keep majority of the elected members out of parliament using his minions in and out of government. So much for his attempts to play the victim, we are supposed to accept that Governor Godwin Obaseki’s unilateral abrogation of the seats of 14 members in a 24-member parliament is an acceptable political play since, apparently, he deigns to so pronounce. In this, he has made it clear, that the governor’s word, like those of ancient emperors must be law!

That Obaseki enjoys the perquisites of incumbency and with it the advantages is of course given; what is at issue is whether his legion of moles remaining should be allowed to press that advantage to the detriment of the party now that the dust he created in his former party is beginning to settle somewhat.

Where does Anselm Ojezua, the other factional chairman of Edo APC belong now that his principal and sponsor, Obaseki has left the party? As it is, the matter isn’t so much about his claim of being elected chairman with a four-year mandate to expire in 2022; rather, it is one of fidelity to his party in the aftermath of the affirmation of Pastor Ize-Iyamu as his party’s candidate. Will he now surrender his pride to work with a candidate that he once publicly scorned or will be, as it appears to be the case, remain to spoil the fun for his party and its candidate?

The bottom-line: will the party overlook the schism promoted by those whose mantra of Right of First Refusal has fallen flat on their faces? What about the other injured party – the lawmakers elected but prevented from taking their seats? Where does their interest – which are legitimate – fit in the forced but uneasy truce? Will the party, as it seems reasonable to do, apply the same stick to the recalcitrant mob that have all the while defied the party’s instruction to inaugurate those majority lawmakers through frivolous court actions? Will President Buhari’s order on all to withdraw all litigation apply to those also?

Trust me, the Buni leadership will have its hands full in its bid to resolve the various contending issues. His leadership will certainly be put to test on this as his party hits the road in its bid to retake Osadebey House. To have any chance of success, it seems to me that nothing short of a thorough house cleaning would be required in the coming days.

June 30, 2020
Ajimobi: Of a man and his legacy

By Sanya Oni

As the nation mourns the passing of Abiola Ajimobi, I recall how a little more than a year ago, precisely on April 2, 2019, I had described the late governor as an unlikely candidate for a popularity contest. I gave my reasons. Here was a governor who dared to tell a bunch of unruly, red-eyed undergraduates to respect ‘constituted authority’ when they came marching on Agodi, the seat of Oyo State government. As if to cement his public image as “Mr. Controversy”, then followed the rather bruising encounter with the musical icon, Yinka Ayefele over the latter’s violation of the state’s town planning laws on which the governor had insisted that the law rather than sentiment would hold sway. And then to crown it all, his attempt to modernize the traditional institution in the ancient town of Ibadan, his beloved city, which, though well-intended, became politicised.

But then, I also noted that those would pass for mere footnotes given his rather impressive legacies. I noted his impressive efforts to transform the ancient city from the urban jungle that it was, into a modern functional city with physical planning infrastructures in place and befitting aesthetics. I couldn’t resist touching on what I called the Ajimobi Magic: the wider and neater urban roads particularly the inner-city roads which he had put on a steady path of renewal. I highlighted in the piece the drainage masterplan aimed at banishing the perennial flooding in the ancient city, and his administration’s singular effort to transform their rustic landscapes of Oke-Ogun right through to the other ancient cities of Oyo and Ogbomoso into modernity. I then concluded on what seems to me his greatest achievement: the successful termination of the reign of the warlords – the rival transport unions who saw themselves as not only above the nation’s laws but are known to routinely unleash violence and mayhem on innocent citizens without provocation.

To these I can only add another fitting epitaph – the statement credited to Seyi Makinde, his PDP successor on the Ajimobi administration’s novel School Governing Board policy under which old boys/girls and the community are given a seat in the running of schools: “Let me give kudos to the last administration for bringing SGB onboard, but I want to add here that our administration will take the policy to a greater height”.

Surely, the good people of Oyo State will remember Ajimobi as a man who not only dared to dream but also actualized them. Now, all that matters is the testimony across the board – which is that he left the state far better than he met it!

Adieu Isiaka Abiola Ajimobi.

June 30, 2020
Adieu, Koseleri!

By Olakunle Abimbola

Oyo governors from 1999, men of means all, preened with upcountry grace.

But Isiaka Abiola Ajimobi (1949-2020; governor from 2011 to 2019), the Oyo Renaissance man, if ever there was one, blazed a different trail. In him, Oyo native wit, cohered with cosmopolitan poise, with breathtaking grace.

The late Lam(idi) Adesina, Oyo’s first governor in 1999, was a respected teacher and avowed Awoist.

But not even that twin-respectability, coupled with an indifferent governorship, could shield him from election-time Ibadan ancestral wars, that as a rule, eliminate each governor, after a single term.

Rashidi Ladoja, shipping magnate, anti-Abacha struggle NADECO subaltern, but ace gubernatorial serf, never rose above the Lamidi Adedibu serfdom which, with the ruthless Obasanjo-era “federal might”, propelled him to power in 2003.

His, therefore, was a legacy of gubernatorial chaos, triggered by a feeble serf, comically springing self from the tight leash, of his feudal lord — an exercise in futility, with tragicomic results: rogue impeachment, judicial restoration and final humiliating usurpation, via a suspect “election”, by own deputy!

Christopher Adebayo Alao-Akala, Ogbomoso ace in the volatile, pre-Ajimobi Oyo governorship cast, was the very opposite of Ladoja: the mild-mannered, easy-go-merry fellow; and gubernatorial serf that knew his place in the Adedibu feudal court.

He kept faith, even as the Alaafin Molete (dis)order consumed itself, with its federal backers — and promptly got voted out, after a term, by the regnant mood of the time.

In Seyi Makinde, the sitting Oyo governor and Ajimobi’s successor, the grains of pseudo-nativism and pseudo-cosmopolitanism sit in awkward cohabitation, such that you can hardly vouch for the genuineness of either.

Little wonder, then: just over one year into his gubernatorial tour, he appears well trapped and truly lost in the quicksand of politics and policy.

With his “Auxiliary” Oyo motor park romance, it’s hard to say whether Makinde romps into the future; or ricochets, with a vengeance, into the neo-Adedibu political Stone Age! Yet, those seedy characters were the first Ajimobi clinically took out, to launch his governorship era.

It’s little wonder too: no Oyo governor, since 1999, has measured up to the Ajimobi galaxy — a million stars, in sparkle, class and dash, complete with own dust.

Yes, own dust! Ask the gubernatorial gladiators that cut-and-thrust for the 2019 Oyo All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket, and not a few would swear to, in Ajimobi, an alleged IBB-like ruthless power-succession trick and streak: that penchant to invite the multitude to a position that either was not vacant, or was already tailor-made for a not-so-secret protege.

Even then, for those who lost out in the sweepstakes, it was opportunism and counter-opportunism gone awry.

The growlers-in-chief, over the alleged Ajimobi wild goose chase, would have been unfazed crowers-in-chief, had that path earned them the coveted diadem! It’s back to the very basics of high-stake politics: win some; lose some; nothing assured!

Still on politics: in Ajimobi’s umpteenth demonization, Makinde thought he had found a sword of Damocles, which though never comes down, appeared a potent partisan blackmail(?) threat, in four years at least. Poor guy! That sword vanished with Ajimobi’s June 25 exit!

Indeed, speaking after Ajimobi’s death, Makinde volunteered, cant or frank: that the Oyo government now rolls on a “blueprint” the late Ajimobi had put in place, in some of its activities.

Earnest or frivolous, that would appear a frank endorsement of Ajimobi as an acute mind and brilliant policy wonk, who left Oyo better than he met it, more than any of his governorship peers since 1999.

At 70, Ajimobi neither died young nor lived especially long. In a video released after his death, he said he pleaded with God to make him attain 70, since his father died some two months shy of that landmark.

But after attaining 70, and seeing life’s sweet “mudu-mudu” (Yoruba for gravy and lollies) — there, the quintessential Ajimobi the wit, cracked up everyone and got them to double up with laughter — he beseeched God to further extend his life! Well, he died months later.

Still, eternal youth and tidiness clung to Ajimobi all his life — a handsome face, winsome smile and dapper frame, impeccably dressed in tidy, smart, stylish cuts, native or foreign. And you never saw a wittier, smoother, more fluent or more urbane orator on the horizon, English or Yoruba!

These may all be personal traits. But in Ajimobi’s policy thrusts, in his infrastructural interventions, and in his radical clean-up of Ibadan, pre-Ajimobi, one of the dirtiest cities around, you saw the Ajimobi re-birth: clean, tidy, spick-and-span.

Indeed, driving round Ibadan, either via Challenge and its beautiful and well-cultivated flora, or via Iwo road and Bodija, you saw a glorious re-making of Ibadan in the late governor’s clean, tidy and classy image.

In Bodija, a certain short bridge, whenever flooded, for eons, led to untold catastrophe. But no more! It was one of the simple but effective solutions Ajimobi put in place, very early in his governorship — just like the Mokola flyover, which later snowballed into an infrastructure bloom, in gleaming roads, that enhanced the Ibadan metropolis, and drove up the value of real estate.

But Ajimobi was incomplete without his courage of conviction. On virtual election eve 2019, he ordered the partial demolition of musician Yinka’s Ayefele’s Music House, a part of which the city planning authorities said infringed on town planning rules.

The flak that came — mostly emotive — could have downed a jet. Yet, the governor stood his ground, and negotiated a win-win, if painful, settlement. That move saved Ayefele’s property from any future censure — courage of conviction!

But it also cost the “intensely hated” governor dearly. Indeed, the Ibadan electoral nemesis, which he had escaped by his Koseleri gubernatorial feat, turned his Koseleri 1 governorship triumph, into a Koseleri 2 senatorial defeat, en route to the Oyo APC governorship candidate losing to the rival PDP.

Many an APC partisan still blames Ajimobi for that gubernatorial loss; while glorying and gloating over his botched senatorial run. But the man took both in his strides and moved on.

Indeed, on reading “Koseleri 1 & 2” in this column (The Nation, 19 March 2019), Ajimobi put a call through to Ripples.

After good natured chit-chat that lasted some 20 minutes, the former governor asked point blank: do I really have a sharp tongue? — to which Ripples responded in the positive. That piece had closed with this quip: “The gripping epitaph of the Ajimobi era? Policy brain and beauty ruined by the tongue!”

That telephone conversation brought memories of earlier wit and joke-suffused

Ajimobi encounters: at Ibadan and Osogbo during The Nation’s now rested South

West integration confabs; at Elder Ayo Afolabi’s 70th anniversary Monday morning bash, at the University of Ibadan International Conference Centre’s main auditorium, where Ajimobi left everyone reeling with laughter, while speaking extempore!

Adieu, Isiaka Abiola Ajimobi, the Koseleri of our time, self-named “Constituted Authority” and true founder of modern Oyo State. When comes another?

June 30, 2020
Enugu braces up

Gabriel Amalu

The coronavirus pandemic, otherwise called Covid-19, has remained a source of trepidation, for the citizens of the world. Defying science, the virus is making a mincemeat of the advancement, by Homo sapiens. Until Covid-19, birthed in Wuhan China late last year, humans have lived the illusion that with the aid of science and technology, they have become their own god, and intrinsically a competitor in creation with God.

While using technology to tame the environment and make life easy, humans went as far as attempting to use science, to create man in its own image. Starting with the so-called test tube babies, scientists were feverishly working hard to prove that what ‘God’ can do, they too can do same. Those arguing that it was ethically repugnant to natural order, to manufacture humans, outside the biologically mandated and allowable procedures, were ignored.

Bust. The coronavirus pandemic birthed in Wuhan province in China, late last year, perhaps to draw the world’s attention to the underlying reality, that despite all the strides and huge fields covered, the fundamentals have never been conquered. To compound the ignorance of man, there is a raging debate whether what has turned the world upside down, is a virus or bacteria. The Igbo adage that says: “you must remember where the rain started beating you, in other to remember where it stopped” is applicable here.

The world must first understand what beguiles it, to discover how to tame the monster. Mimicking popularity, in its duplicity, Covid-19, has turned itself into a world-trophy on a world tour. Starting in Asia, with China, as its epicentre, it wangled its way to Europe, barring its fingers in the city of the old saints, Italy, as the chosen epicentre. After awing European cities, it crossed over to shake hands with the United States of America.

Indeed, the hitherto all-knowing and all powerful, United States of America, is in the throes of strangulation by Covid-19, with her bumbling President Donald Trump, presently arguing dubiously that it is better not to know the extent of the ravaging impact of the virus, by reducing the number of those tested daily. This was after, he had argued that the Covid-19 was a fluke, engineered by the opposition Democratic Party and their foreign collaborators, to derail his second term election, which is due by September this year.

From initially denying the existence of the virus, Trump turned his twitter skills, like an enchanter, to boasting that the USA was by far, the country with the highest capacity to test more people than the whole of the world put together. When the use of ventilator appeared to be the containment for Covid-19, Trump, tuned his boast to the production of ventilators. He again boasted that the USA was producing more ventilators that the whole world put together.

From the North America, the pandemic veered to South America, with Brazil as the epicentre. With about 1.3 million confirmed cases, over 57,100 deaths, as I write this piece, there are demonstrations for and against the handling of the epidemic by President Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Some of his critics have argued that his handling of the virus has decimated the Brazilian economy. While he was initially dismissive of the virus and the measures advised by the World Health Organisation, the Brazilian economy is expected to contract by about 4.7 per cent this year.

So, Covid-19, has become a monstrous monster in the mould of the science fiction thriller: Godzilla versus Kong. Creatures so huge and destructive that it walks on skyscrapers, spewing fire that burns physical objects into ashes in its trail. Unfortunately, Covid-19 is a real and deadly deal. Interestingly, while Trump, is at the head of the bumbling team of leaders, in their handling of Covid-19 pandemic, there are leaders who have exhibited grip and dexterity in their dealing with the pandemic.

One of such leaders, the world looks upon, is the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Yes, the same leader that our dear President Muhammadu Buhari, joked to, about women’s place, being in the other room. While political commentators describe her as lame duck, considering that she may be near the end of her political career, she has been praised for her handling of the pandemic. From Europe to America, the praises have been high. According to The Atlantic: “For weeks now, Germany’s leader has deployed her characteristic sentimentality, to guide the country through what has thus far been a relatively successful battle against Covid-19.”

With the fear that Africa may become the next epicentre of the pandemic, states must brace up, to contain the feared implosion. From no testing centres, at the onset of the pandemic, in the entire old Northern Nigeria, and former Eastern Nigeria, many states now have two to three testing centres; Kaduna and Kano states for instance. Also, the PPE’s are being manufactured in thousands, while the reagents are more readily available, making more tests possible.

Of course, the numbers have begun to shoot up, with Lagos, the commercial nerve centre of the country and the nation’s epicentre of the Covid-19, having a lion share, as expected. The testing capacity of Lagos, is probably as much as the rest of the country put together, and it has built many isolation centres to fight the scourge. Enugu State, which has been relatively safe comparatively, even though some have argued that the testing capacity is lacking, has taken the bull by the horn, to wrestle the Covid-19 beast.

Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, (Gburugburu) has assured stakeholders that he is up to the task. With the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital’s (UNTH) testing centre up and running, he has set up a highly technical Expert Medical Advisory Committee, led by Professor Emmanuel Ejim, a professor of medicine and a consultant cardiologist, to map out strategies and organize the state to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Of the world leaders mentioned in this piece, Ugwuanyi, approximates closest to Germany’s Angela Merkel, who does not play politics with every opportunity, unlike presidents Trump of USA and Bolsonaro of Brazil.

The governor, who is press shy and meek, no doubt, has an uncommon connection to the ordinary people in the state, and critics have interpreted that as a weakness. But despite initial criticisms on this page, he has successfully tamed the farmers/herders’ clashes in the state, without climbing the roof top to gloat about it. Going forward, Covid-19, is another governance challenge, he must ride to submission. The Prof Ejim led committee, with the like of Dr. Emeka Onoh, a public health physician, with United Kingdom qualifications, must help Governor Ugwuanyi, to contain the feared Covid-19 implosion in the state.

June 30, 2020
A time of reckoning

Olatunji Dare

See how they have been tumbling, like ninepins.

Across the United States and Europe, monuments erected often in mythic proportions over the centuries to men regarded as heroes not just of the epoch but of History have come tumbling down in the past three weeks, felled by those who had looked on them with indifference or had in silence felt taunted, haunted, cruelly violated even, by the presence of those images in those spaces.

Men who held other men, women and children as common property, yet composed some of the noblest literary monuments to human freedom. Generals who fought gallantly and tenaciously in epic battles to preserve the right to enslave fellow humans. Absentee kings who stole entire countries and drove the indigenous people to near extinction through brute labour

Merchants who built untold wealth through trafficking men and women and children of the darker races across the oceans to be traded like merchandise, with one half of the cargo perished in the horrors of the so-called Middle Passage and dumped in the ocean. The traffickers were nevertheless canonized as genuine philanthropists, for bequeathing a tiny portion of their profit from this pernicious trade to worthy causes.

Scholars and statesmen whose enduring fame rests in part on denying the humanity of others or rejecting the claims of such persons to being humans.

Washington DC. protesters pulled down and burned the statue of Confederate General Albert General Albert Pike. The police in the city had to intervene to save the statute of Andrew Jackson, the 8th president of the United States, who instituted policies that resulted in the forced migration of tens of thousands of Native Americans.

In Maryland, they brought down the statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and dumped Christopher Columbus’s statute in the sea, perhaps so that his admirers would not feel neglected.

In Charleston, South Carolina, the statue John Calhoun, arch-defender of the plantation system of enslavement and former U. S. Vice president, John Calhoun, was dismantled overnight and the pieces carted away to storage, following a vote by the City council.

Princeton’s Trustees said Wilson’s racism was “significant and consequential” even by the standards of his own time, adding that “his racist thinking and politics made him “an inappropriate namesake for an institution whose scholars, students and alumni must stand firmly against racism in all its forms.”

Across the Atlantic, the sun was about to set on Winston Churchill’s statute on Parliament Square in London when the police intervened. Protesters were set to tear it down and dump it in the Thames, on account of his blatant racism.

“I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas,” he said in 1937, in a speech before the House of Commons. “I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.” No prizes for figuring out those the original British Bulldog he had in mind.

He was reviving a train of thought he had voiced some twenty years earlier as president the British Air Council. “I do not admit… that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia… by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race… has come in and taken its place,” he had said then.

When British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan made his historic “wind of change” speech before South Africa’s parliament in 1964, Churchill criticized him roundly, saying he should not have gone to the apartheid bastion “to encourage those blackamoors.”

His coarse and ingrained racism came to the surface when he wondered aloud how black people could know that they had the measles. They not only knew when they had the measles, it should be said for the benefit of Churchill’s fellow travelers, they devised long, long ago, an effective remedy for containing and curing it, 100 per cent local content, and no harmful side effects. They should go check it out

Not since the collapse of the Soviet Union when jubilant citizens across the world tore down statues of Lenin and other leaders of the communist world and heaped all manner of indignities on them has the world witnessed the rejoicing of recent weeks.

Why now?

The contributory factors are legion, dating back from the enduring memories of the era of enslavement and time of Jim Crow, to the present age of systemic racism in which, according to the influential New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who was reared in apartheid South Africa, in which “a black life is worth less than a white life,” and the calculus is so woven into the national consciousness that people hardly remark it.

I would argue, however, that more than anything else, the barbarous murder of George Floyd in police custody on suspicion of making a purchase with a fake $20 bill, in Minneapolis, in the American Midwest, was the fuse that lit this conflagration.

Even now, I can see him in my mind’s eye, both hands cuffed behind his back, the left side of his face grazing the tarmac and secured firmly there by the left knee of officer Derek Chauvin resting resolutely on his neck while two officers hold him down by force and a fourth, unperturbed, makes small talk with horrified bystanders.

The world literally heard Floyd begging for his life, summoning his waning strength to tell his executioners over and over that he cannot breath, and to call out to his deceased mother. The world saw his life snuffed out on that tarmac, just like that, as the Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti would say.

Even for the generations that have grown used to seeing such casual barbarities and unconscionable cruelties visited on black persons, this was too much. The revulsion was compounded by the release of videos showing a father-and-son team hunting down and killing Ahmaud Auberry for the atrocious crime of jogging while black. And of Rayshard Brooks, 27, who dozed off in the driveway of a fast-food restaurant only to end up dead, just like that, when the police moved to arrest him in the manner they know best.

It is undeniable that while much has changed in America, the essence has remained the same. Throughout American history, Roger Cohen wrote two weeks ago, “white cruelty in keeping blacks down has been backed only by white ingenuity in finding new ways to do so.” For the foreseeable future, America will continue to operate as it always has: in the belief that a white life is worth much more than a black life.

It was no aberration that when they went to arrest the white supremacist Dylann Roof whose hand was literally dripping with the blood of nine black men and women he had just killed as they were studying the word of God in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, they didn’t rush him. They didn’t shackle him. They went about it with the utmost courtesy, even buying him lunch at a fast-food restaurant.

Smashing monuments here, renaming institutions elsewhere and consigning into disesteem, if not villainy, those who had for centuries enjoyed a gratuitous reputation for nobility, is not going to change in the condition of black people in America. But even it only serves to alert the public to alternative narratives, especially the narratives of victims, it would be an enduring turning point.

Not least among the likely consequences of the movement that has recently seized the global imagination is a heightened demand across nations for a re-examination and revaluation of those the public has been conditioned to regard as heroes and makers of history

Military president Ibrahim Babangida did more than any other person to destroy higher education in Nigeria. Should the university named for him in Lapai, Niger State, get to keep its name? Should other Nigerian universities named for odious characters get to keep their soiled identities? Should the reputations of native monarchs of old who delivered their people into enslavement survive the critical interrogation already afoot elsewhere?

Should the sports stadium, the military barracks and a raft of other facilities named for Sani Abacha continue to be saddled with his loathsome identity?

Let the debate begin.

June 30, 2020
APC House of commotion

By Sanya Oni

I have long resolved not to take our political actors too seriously more so as their excitable mind games sometimes border on the delinquency.

Not so however, when such pathologies not only seek to stretch our traditionally fragile institutions to their limits but are actually programmed to undermine, if not destroy, them.

Now, if anyone is still in doubts as to whether delinquency pays, they only need to look at the latest happenings in Edo, Ondo and Rivers’ APC to appreciate how rewarding it has since become for some and maybe costly for others!

From Port Harcourt, to Benin right up to the nation’s seat of power – Abuja; the story is the same of politicians’ endless judicial forum-shopping all in the bid to ambush their opponents.

If it is not a desperate governor seeking to bar opponents from contesting an election in a democracy, his legion of minions are everywhere shopping for courts to use in thwarting the democratic process!

Of course, with countless ex parte orders may of which were procured sometimes at the speed of light and more often than not in the dead of the night from a no less complicit judiciary over just about anything under the sun, there can be no telling of how far things can still degenerate.

Like a friend quipped over the weekend, we might yet see a court in Nigeria issue an order ex parte barring one party in a matrimonial ruckus from performing his/her conjugal duties pending the determination of the motion on notice!

Thanks to the technocrat wayfarer in Edo Government House, politicians have been presented a new playbook when things get really tough.

In the book, political disagreements are supposed to be akin to a dispute over sharing of state money – in other words, those who worked to put you in the Government House aren’t entitled to reasonable expectations of patronage!

Because the fight in Edo, in the book of Godwin Nogheghase Obaseki, is one between the forces of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, every conceivable force in the land – from the courts to the police and the legislature – must be suborned in the quest to crush all opponents.

In the project, party rules and practices are fair game; everything must be wrestled into the ground in the bid to return Obaseki to the throne (my emphasis) in September.

Don’t ask me if the hounding 14 in a 24-member parliament into exile is right from the playbook; I leave you, my readers to judge.

Political delinquency has never been so rich and rewarding!

But then, the latter would appear not a preserve of the tenant at Osadebey House. In Alagbaka House, Ondo State’s seat of government, a similar macabre dance is playing out.

Trust the police not only to insert itself into matters strictly within the arena of politics but actually lending itself to partisan play and this in a brazen manner.

Here, I refer to the latest incident in Akure, the Ondo State capital, in which the residence of the deputy governor, Agboola Ajayi, was invaded by a police detachment led by the commissioner of police, Salami Bolaji.

Here is what the state government said of the incident that should ordinarily embarrass its helmsman, a learned Silk: “It should, [however], be placed on records that it is a time-tested code in government’s business for officials to take inventory of offices and quarters before and after an official is moving in or out of offices or quarters.”

Moving out? At this time, the information in the public domain was that the deputy governor planned to resign from his party – the APC; no suggestion giving up the plum job, which he insisted his people had not so directed – which makes it rather far-fetched that the number one cop in the state would summarily revoke the deputy governor’s immunity in his self-appointed role as the state’s chief inventory officer!

Here is the relevant part of the transcript of the comments by CP Salami in video which has since gone viral: “We are not saying you should not go out.

Since you are defecting, even your letter was brought to me in my office this evening that you are doing it (decamping) on Monday.

What the government is saying is that you cannot go out with official vehicles. This is politics; I am not saying it is right. This is a government house, the governor is the one talking, give me a few minutes, let me talk to my boss.”

The summary: an admission that the governor was actually the one behind what in intelligence parlance is called psych-Ops! Never mind the incoherence; the lapsus linguae (slip of the tongue); or even the pathetic attempt at playing the Pontius Pilate, our top cop was merely the marionette!

Stranger still however is the spin put to the shameful encounter days after the embarrassing video hit the cyber-sphere. To Tee-Leo Ikoro, spokesman of the state police command, his boss “only came to the scene when his officers and men at the government house could not broker peace between the aides of the governor and that of the deputy governor over the number of cars the deputy governor would drive out at the time.”

You say blessed are the peacemakers? I say – not those who make an already bad case worse!

For a polity already suffering multiple underlying conditions, the problem isn’t just that our politicians have infested the polity with a deadly variant of pandemic not unlike Covid-19, it is that the two key institutions – the judiciary and the police – which ought to have provided stabilization, have become part of the problem.

Which is why the directive by the Chief Judge of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Justice Ishaq Bello, barring judges of the court from issuing ex-parte orders to stop elections comes as refreshing.

Warning that disciplinary action would be initiated against any judge that violates the New Practice Direction operative in all high courts in the FCT, he says: “we want the natural growth of democracy.

We want the political actors’ role to learn how to resolve their disputes within themselves without coming to court, except where it is exceedingly necessary”.

Fine talk, no doubt. But do they care?

June 23, 2020
SLA of Edo?

Olakunle Abimbola

Remember Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA), second Premier of the 1st Republic Western Region, from December 1959 to January 1966?

Godwin Obaseki, the Edo governor, appears an SLA-reincarnate. The SLA-Obaseki historical parallels, in this Obaseki-Oshiomhole titanic bust-up, are simply eerie!

SLA accused Awolowo, his predecessor and party leader, of stifling control, almost crippling his Premiership. Awo countered, slamming SLA with vaulting ambition and ultimate perfidy.

Between Obaseki and Oshiomhole, it is similar trading of mutual allegations, though Obaseki went one beyond SLA, rigging processes to oust his predecessor from his home ward, thus causing the APC national chair a severe heartache.

In 1962, SLA precipitated a crisis in the Western Parliament, foiling a session which could have guillotined him as Premier, replacing him with Alhaji Dauda Adegbenro.

In 2019 Obaseki, in a moonlight, midnight absurdist drama, inaugurated the minority of Edo Assembly-elects, shutting out the majority; for fear of impeachment, from Oshiomhole loyalists.

From 1963, SLA used strong-arm tactics to subdue a progressively restive partisan opponents, which eventually snowballed into the region-wide “wet-ie” near-anarchy.

From 2019, Obaseki has used suspect laws, harsh threats and sundry ploys, to game partisan foes, demolish rivals’ property, with Edo witnessing more political violence.

In 1962, SLA pressed into service, with his federal sponsors, the Coker Commission of Inquiry, to destroy Awo as a person; and the AG as a party, so much so that not a few were hooting the political obituary of both.

In 2019, Obaseki launched his own commission of inquiry that promptly “indicted” his predecessor; and is fishing for court orders to effect his arrest. As with Awo and AG, not a few are singing nunc dimittis for Oshiomhole, and a possible APC collapse.

In 1962 SLA, holding tight to the Premiership, turned his AG expulsion into a “glorious” desertion, joining forces with the rival NCNC western arm, to run a post-emergency regional government, and muscle the next election with disastrous consequences.

In 2020 Obaseki, holding tight to the governorship, turned his APC disqualification into a “glorious” defection into the rival PDP. But a key difference: SLA connived with the then “federal might”. Now, Obaseki is jumping under the federal opposition duvet.

By that, however, the governor echoes the tragic fate of Coriolanus, in the Shakespeare tragic play of that title, who teamed up with bitter enemies, Volscians, to attack his native Rome, found it a mission-impossible, and got smitten, for treachery, by his enraged new friends. Will Obaseki cut a different path? Time will tell.

But that is where the Obaseki-Oshiomhole brawl segues into the classics, from contemporary political history: for it bears all the mark of tragic drama, classical or modern; complete with what the Greeks call hamartia — the tragic flaw, which almost always turns fatal for the tragic hero.

Both Governor Obaseki (desperate, at all cost, to retain his governorship); and Adams Oshiomhole (equally determined to regain his Edo political base, aside from his APC national chair) come to the gripping, bruising tragic party with enough hamartia to spare.

A grand irony: Classicist Obaseki (he earned his first degree in Classical Studies at the University of Ibadan), falls pat into the mould of the tragic hero, with a surfeit of hubris, which doomed many a tragic hero: in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex and Antigone; in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and Macbeth; and in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus.

In all of these tragedies, sheer hubris pushed the tragic heroes to their doom — hubris, that penchant to go for broke, spurred by a tragic flaw that turned fatal.

The SLA-Obaseki parallel might be contemporary political history. But the setting, in SLA’s 1962 and Obaseki’s 2020, may well have been in Thebes or Corinth or Troy —immortal settings of great Greek tragedies. But are these ironies lost on the classicist governor-turned-financial whiz?

Oshiomhole, former Edo governor and Obaseki’s godfather-turned-god foe, comes with own rippling hubris too; and could well fit into the classical mould, if his estranged godson somehow pulls the Edo political rug from under his feet.

But no thanks to bitter propaganda exchanges, a picture, that immediately went viral, showed Oshiomhole as humble tailor of yore, receiving a plaque, as second best tailor in a guild contest, circa 1986!

A lowly tailor could cut Oshiomhole in the mould of Willy Loman, in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman — that pathos-filled, no less shattering fall of a low man, in modern tragedies!

But classical or modern, Oshiomhole boasts a grand irony all his own: the one that proclaimed himself the slayer of Edo godfathers, after he politically guillotined the likes of Tony “The Fixer” Anenih (of no especially sweet political memory!), risks being slain by a godson-successor he himself installed! It doesn’t get more grimly ironic!

Even more roiling: Philip Shuaibu, Oshiomhole’s once-upon-a-time comrade-protege from their Labour Union days, probably “planted” with Obaseki to “correct” moments like this, has spectacularly jumped ship, and become unfazed tormentor-in-chief! Poor Oshiomhole! He is finding out, the bitter way: one man’s slippery treachery, is another man’s solid loyalty!

Still, beyond tragedies and tragic heroes, the crux of this titanic battle on the Edo front is political mentorship gone awry; and its dire implication for the democratic polity, which soul is the political party. So, those that demonize “godfathers” miss the point.

The Awolowo-SLA tussle from 1962, and the SLA rebellion which peaked from 1963, destroyed the Action Group of Nigeria (AG). But the AG’s destruction also ship-wrecked the 1st Republic (1960 – 1966).

AG midwifed the most tremendous social transformation in Nigerian history, when it ran the Western Region, between 1952 and 1959. Imagine what the country could have gained, had AG survived and matured till now?

But the 1st Republic did not buckle because of AG’s collapse. It did, among other reasons, because democracy is a sham without vibrant political parties. So, party supremacy is a key success factor, for any democratic polity.

That is the solemn crux of the matter, despite the hysteria across the partisan aisle. Which is why every party must crush the current conceit of governors, who figure that once elected, they tower above their parties. That’s condemnable conceit!

It destroyed the AG in 1962. It destroyed the PDP in 2013. It is probably destroying the APC. That is why SLA, Obaseki and likes would always incur history’s blight.

But really, the loser, yet again, is the democratic polity, which needs a vibrant political party system, oiled by disciplined members.

But back to the dramatis personae in this gripping drama. Even if Oshiomhole loses, in the immediate sweepstakes, his hubris would be inflexibility — to solidify the party, he would claim; to game internal dissent, his foes would counter. Both, however, are no high dishonour.

But Obaseki? With nary any principle or grace, and a surfeit of petulance and strong arm tactics, he has proved the governor as a constitutional monster.

By betraying both his party and benefactor, he only reinforces the fatal flaw of an earlier Obaseki, that in 1897, betrayed Oba Ovonramwen, and the Bini people, to the invading British; and undermined Eweka II, Ovonramwen’s successor, from 1914. That is no consistent flaw to lug!

Even if he wins this one, he risks a Coriolanus, “slaughtered” in strange political territory. Still, time will tell!

June 23, 2020